Seven male sex-workers from a prominent Cape Town agency were introduced to the world of photography through Polaroid lenses. The participants each received a Polaroid camera and after a basic demonstration and presentation of essential camera and composition basics, were given an open brief to snap their environment and themselves.

The resulting images (which were shown at blank projects in July 2006) revealed a surprising sensitivity of keen observation in some, and a delightful and playful portrait of Cape Town and surrounds in others, while a select few made direct reference to the participant’s working environment.

As a whole the results were a realistic affirmation: filled with light, beaches, sand and leisure time on one hand, counter-pointed by a darker interior side on the other. The world revealed through the eyes of individual rent boys seems not much different from any Capetownian’s world, and by inference, everyone who experiences life as a paradoxical combination of joy and celebration despite difficult circumstances and a few cloudy days of the soul.

This project and exhibition aimed at gaining visibility for individuals forging an existence in this doubly negated realm of identity on the eve of proposed legislative reforms to the sex-work industry as a whole.

This projects was made possible with funding from the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, administered as a Greatmore Studios outreach project, with special support from S.W.E.A.T (the Sex Workers Education and Action taskforce)